Warn Locking Hub Kits
- May 25th, 2010
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In the center of the two front wheels of a 4WD vehicle, you may find two small dials. These are manual locking hubs. These two dials may look simple, but they perform an important job for your vehicle.
When driving your 4WD vehicle on a slippery, icy, or muddy road, you may care for little else except that each tire has power and is fighting for every bit of traction. When four wheel drive is not in use, the locking hubs are used to disconnect the front wheels from the front axle drive components (differential, half-shafts, and driveshaft). Doing this will allow the front axle drive components to stop spinning, saving unnecessary wear and tear on those parts and helping to improve the fuel economy.
Manual locking hubs were invented by Arthur Warn in 1948. Until then, the typical 4WD vehicle was “full-time” 4WD. These were undesirable because the constant 4WD made them suffer from excess wear and stress on all the drivetrain components from the front axle to the rear axle and everything in between, poor gas mileage, and bad street driving characteristics especially on dry pavement.
Over the years, most 4WD auto makers have done away with manual hubs and made a switch to automatic ones. The SUV craze that took the American auto marketplace by storm in the late 1980’s and well into the 1990’s is likely responsible for this. Families from all walks of life had to have an SUV because an SUV meant 4WD. The problem was that an overwhelming majority of these SUV drivers wouldn’t know how to engage the 4WD system. To make the SUV more appealing, manufacturers outfitted them with hubs that were automatic.
As time has passed, SUV drivers from near and far have learned that these automatic units aren’t as wonderful as the auto manufacturers made them out to be. Sure, they were convenient… when they worked! It’s a well known fact that when you take something simple and begin to complicate it, failure is more prone to happen. The migration from standard hubs to automatic ones was no exception. Auto units have a reputation for their unreliability at critical times and for being weak under stress.
Manual locking hubs are stronger than their auto counterparts. It’s for this reason that off-roaders will always choose manual hubs over automatic ones. Even if an axle with automatic hubs has been routinely maintained, the serious off-roader can not rely on it because there are too many circumstances for which it will fail or just not perform when the moment is critical.
Manual locking hubs are an ideal replacement for auto hub axles for their simplicity, reliability, strength, and low cost. The off-road marketplace has kits available that allow drivers to replace automatic locking hubs for manual ones.
Understanding how these units work will help you get the most out of them and they are much easier to upgrade and maintain than auto units.
For some applications you may need a spindle nut conversion kit in order to convert your automatic hubs to manual hubs. MY4BY OFF ROAD has all the parts you need to make this process quick and easy.